Grandma’s House and Other Haunts

The places that scare you

Photo by Eric Muhr on Unsplash

I thought I might like the company of ghosts, but when I remember the rooms I’ve avoided for looming static, acid oozes and sticks some place near my solar plexus. For raw fear crawls indefinitely, a hollowed out feeling from bone to skin.

At my grandma’s house, I refused to stay in my uncle’s or aunt’s childhood bedroom, for as a child, I was aware of some sickness lurking there.

In my uncle’s room, it was not just that I knew my grandma kept her witch costume in that sliding mirrored closet, something else looked at me there. Something that knew my soul because it perhaps shared my blood, or it had been there before my grandparents bought the house.

My aunt’s room was defiantly down the hall. She had kept a box of trinkets, and I was forbidden to play with it. There was some lunacy and mystery to her room, and I felt that it held a prisoner — a punished soul.

In waking life, my travels have taken me to unsuspected haunted places. A friend’s rented farmhouse had a room where no one went. It was called “Grandma’s Room.” To open the door was to have the wind knocked out of you, or if you didn’t believe it, you could laugh at the joke. But she was in there. I dared a peek inside.

Cold terror repeats for those who smell an ancient death, or connect to something else when entering a building. I knew the narrow stairs of my friend’s home in Amsterdam would lead me to a clearly haunted upstairs. I was not alone in the shower and guest room. Bathing myself and tucking myself into bed was not a private moment. What evils had occurred within the broken tiled stall? What breath was stolen before I came to visit this friend?

Perhaps that’s the reason so many survived by absinthe. Layers of European history confuse the senses. Making peace with these unsettled spirits does not come naturally.

I wander into these rooms often in my dreams; there is frequently the same house, the same door to a room, where someone sits, depraved on the bed, and I ask if it’s me there, scaring myself enough to feel alive.

© Samantha Lazar 2020 - originally published in Scrittura.